Maybe Next Year
by Clara Barton
Summary: After the war things are different, but they are the same. A dialogue free fic in response to AmberlyinViolet's prompt: 2x3 where Duo finds a baby and brings it home.


For Amberlyinviolet's prompt of a 2x3 with Duo finding a baby in an alley and bringing it home.

Title references 'Send in the Clowns' - which should probs be a hint for the level of angst to expect.

Warnings: I someone imagine that other people could take that prompt and make it humorous. But I… I am broken. So I apologize. If you are looking for fluff and humor and baby cuteness, this is completely the wrong place.

Angst, language, angst, violence, angst.

Pairings: 2x3

Maybe Next Year

Unpacking. The therapist that Trowa had to see called it that, his period of readjustment when he came back from a long undercover op. He insisted that it was normal, that Trowa packaged up his reality when he went away on a mission and then had to slowly unpack it, had to shed the persona he had adopted while away and unpack himself and remember how to be Trowa Barton when he came home.

He had said that, those exact words - remember how to be Trowa Barton - and his expression had been so soulful and earnest that Trowa had laughed and walked out of the session.

There had been a reprimand for that, a snarky email from Une and an empty threat to chain him to a desk or put him on unpaid leave. Une couldn't afford either option, not with things as bad as they were out there on the distant colonies, not with the riots and the terrorist activity and Trowa's irreplaceable skills.

But he had to go back, had to be polite and sit there and listen to the meaningless words the therapist directed at him because he had to behave, had to prove he was mentally competent enough to function as a civilian as well as as an undercover agent.

Well, he didn't have to.

He could stop, could walk out, could turn in his badge and never go back to that sterile office with the scratchy couch and strange, old Terran style artwork on the walls.

But then what would he do?

Sit at home all day - feel the walls of the apartment slowly close in on him, feel his gut churn with guilt and anger and uselessness?

He'd been sidelined for six months once, a few years ago, forced to stay dirtside and work a desk job while his body healed and he had known then, after those six months of hell, that the civilian life was not for him.

He wasn't the only one not suited to civilian life, wasn't the only one who struggled to find a place and a purpose in this new "peaceful" world that was still filled with violence and horror.

He and Duo hadn't meant to get involved, hadn't planned on becoming more than wary allies who went on missions together because they thought every other agent was too inexperienced or incompetent to watch either of their backs. But staking out a terrorist cell could be surprisingly boring, and Duo's abs surprisingly distracting when they were wet from a shower and framed by a towel wrapped low on his waist.

That first time had made things awkward between them, had made both of them count down until the end of the mission, but then, months later, when Trowa returned from a solo mission he found Duo waiting for him after his debriefing. It became a tradition - whenever one of them was away, the other would wait for him after the debriefing and then they would casually walk down the seemingly endless corridors of Preventers headquarters until they reached the barracks and then, as soon as they were inside and had the door to Duo's quarters - the closest - locked they were anything but casual.

And then Trowa had fucked up, had almost gotten himself killed on that mission and spent six months recovering and Duo had decided it was time to move off base, to get an apartment together and figure out whatever the hell this was between them and Trowa had agreed, because he had literally nothing else to do, and because sex with Duo was the only thing keeping him sane during those long months of recovery, was the only thing that ever really helped him feel grounded and human when he returned from undercover work.

He didn't want to need Duo for that, didn't want to feel so good when they were together, to feel alive and like himself, but he wanted all of that too much to turn away.

Duo felt the same, Trowa could see it in his eyes sometimes - the wariness, the anger and the fear that he felt himself. They were different, so very different, but in many things they were the same.

The sex helped Duo too, but when he got back from missions it was always quick, rough, both of them bruised and scraped afterwards and it always felt like Duo was clawing his way back to Trowa, trying to burrow into his body or dig his way out of the past or something - something that was raw and violent and left both of them breathless and glassy-eyed and too exhausted to be bothered with a shower or a meal afterwards.

Trowa, however, took his time, he had to. Had to feel Duo's flesh under his lips and his fingers, had to know he was still there, still whole, still Duo, and he took his time relearning Duo's body and cataloguing the sounds he made, the gasps of pleasures, the groans and grunts and growls of impatience.

It was different, but it was the same. It was finding each other and it was like a body falling into gravitational orbit, like one of the Lagrange points - that balance, that push and pull and finding home.

Duo had to go to the therapy sessions as well - on his own, and he hated his just as much, thought just as little of his therapist as Trowa thought of his own - and while it was different, it was the same. Duo didn't like talking about his past because he knew it made him weaker, made him vulnerable and he didn't trust anyone, let alone some relative stranger who had faced nothing in his own life that compared to Duo's. Trowa, on the other hand, simply didn't see the point. He had a perfectly acceptable method of coping with his trauma - shoving it as far back in his head as he possibly could and then fucking Duo as long as he possibly could when the memories were too close. It worked. It was fine.

Except it wasn't, not when Duo was away on a mission and Trowa had just returned from one, had just finished his debriefing and been told by Une that the additional casualties were acceptable, that the two dead civilians had been necessary collateral and Trowa knew they weren't, knew their deaths hadn't been necessary and sure as hell weren't acceptable but no one working for Preventers would agree with him. Not Une, not the therapist, not the intel officers who had designed the mission in the first place and told him the target had a wife and a small child.

So Trowa's 'unpacking' was on hold, his adjusting back to _being Trowa Barton_ feeling like he was standing on the edge of a cliff waiting for a good breeze to blow him over.

This had happened before, it wasn't the first time one of them had been away when the other got back from a mission and Trowa handled it the same way he had handled it before. He drank.

He put in his eight hours at the office each day, he filled out the forms and the paperwork and he listened to the idiots around him talk and then he went home and he drank until he fell asleep and when he woke up hungover every morning it was fine, because he woke up, because he hadn't stayed awake all night remembering the expression on the woman's dead face or the way she held her baby or the fact that the target had put himself in front of them, had tried to shield them and really, really that was the reason Trowa had had to kill them too.

Duo didn't drink, not at the best of times and certainly not at the worst and while he arched an eyebrow whenever Trowa was in a dark enough place to drink himself into oblivion he never commented.

After all, when Duo went to that dark place, when Duo returned from a mission and scrubbed his skin raw in the shower until he was bleeding and the water was cold and when Trowa wasn't home Duo had his own horrible methods of coping, his own shitty traditions that made Trowa arch an eyebrow. Duo went to church, he went and sat on the hard wooden pews for hours, until his ass fell asleep and his mind was numb and Trowa had no fucking clue why he did it and Duo sure as hell didn't try to explain so Trowa never commented.

It was different, but it was the same.

Maybe it was more than just the fact that Duo was away, maybe it was more than the fact that Trowa had murdered two civilians as well as the terrorist who was responsible for the deaths of hundreds. Maybe it was the fact that it was November and every time Trowa walked home he walked by the alley, saw the dumpster and heard the harsh winter wind whistling through the narrow gap, the sound almost like a cry.

He'd ignored it, that first time he noticed the sound, he'd catalogued it as the wind and he'd hunched his shoulders against the cold and walked past, thinking of nothing more than stepping into their apartment and fucking Duo before he made dinner because Duo had been a cocktease all day, sending him texts while both of them were stuck in separate briefing meetings.

But Duo hadn't ignored it. Duo hadn't thought it was the sound of the wind. Duo had stopped and Trowa had scowled and looked around because dark alleys would always be excellent places for assassinations and this alley didn't have any illumination and it would be the perfect place for a takedown and all he could think about was -

Duo came back out of the alley holding a bloody mess. A crying, wailing bloody mess that was a baby.

Duo's face was fierce, deadly, and he was silent.

Trowa hailed a cab while Duo wrapped the baby in his jacket.

The hospital staff looked at them as though they were crazy, the nurses not comprehending Duo when he said they would wait, when he patiently explained that no, the baby was not theirs, but they would wait for an update. That they insisted they be given an update.

And six hours later, after too much shitty coffee and too many strange looks from the civilians who recognized their Preventers uniforms and didn't understand why they were at a public hospital, a doctor came out to update them. To tell them that the baby had been born premature, had lungs not fully formed and was hooked up to machines that breathed for her and she would be monitored closely overnight, but that it didn't look good. She was weak and had been abandoned right after birth, had been in the cold for hours and it was a miracle she was alive at all and - and the word miracle had made Duo clench his jaw and nod and look away and Trowa had taken the cue, had told the doctor they would come back in the morning.

Neither of them had slept that night, what little was left of it, and it had been dawn before Duo spoke, before he let Trowa rest his head on his chest and ran his fingers through Trowa's hair and talked about the past, told Trowa about growing up on the streets, about the gang of trash can kids who raised him - babies and children abandoned, left to die just like the girl he had found. Had said that mobile suits and weapons weren't the problem, weren't the reason humans couldn't stop killing each other.

They showered and went back to the hospital, and Trowa was confident they had both been expecting the news, had both known what the doctor would say when he looked up at them and frowned. She had died in the night, had died not long after Duo and Trowa left the hospital.

And Duo had insisted on a funeral, had dragged Trowa to his damn church and they'd been the only ones there, aside from the priest and the acolytes and the grave had been so tiny it seemed insignificant and they'd had to think of a name, for the gravestone, had decided on Helen and Trowa had known not to ask why. Just like he knew not to comment on why Duo went to church. Just like Duo knew not to comment on his drinking.

It was different, but it was the same.

And now it was November again, it was a year later and Trowa was out of liquor and as he walked home he walked past the alley and past the apartment and he kept walking, until he was at the cemetery and standing over Helen's grave and he thought about that day, about that funeral, about the night after, laying in bed, head on Duo's chest, listening to the steady drum of his heartbeat and Duo had asked him if he thought it would ever be better, if humanity could change, if they could change. If there was a point to any of it, if they could ever be something they weren't.

Maybe next year, Trowa had said. Maybe next year they would be better, different. Maybe next year there would be fewer riots, fewer attacks. Fewer baby girls left in dumpsters.

But now, as he stood by the grave and he steeled himself against the cold, harsh November wind he knew he was wrong.

It was different, but it was the same.


End file.
